The big new iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch game from id Software will receive Game Center support and might even gain a feature a fan suggested on a message board, the game's lead creator John Carmack told Kotaku yesterday.

Support for Game Center, Apple's game-networking service for iOS games, will be added back into the on-rails shooter. Id had dropped integration with that service while Rage was being made because id's people had implemented it, well, "half-assed," according to Carmack. It will be added in a free update, since Carmack believes it is essential for the game to have some way to offer online leaderboards and track achievements.

As part of one or more free updates to the app, Carmack also wants to clean out some bugs, tighten up some loopholes that people can use right now to "farm" points. And he wants to address some complaints, like the one he's seen about people accidentally swiping their fingers over the game's pause button.

The most radical change that might come to the game — no promises — from a message board post Carmack saw about Rage. The post had reminded him that, while he was interested in doubling the rail-shooter's content by letting people run through the levels in the reverse direction, a reverse mode would require too much design work to get into this game. But... "Someone suggested just mirroring the levels," Carmack said. "I'm thinking, we mirror the characters — you've got left-handed and right-handed club guys… I can't think why we couldn't do that almost trivially to the game." So maybe we'll get a mirrored Rage update. Maybe.

Carmack said fans shouldn't expect a giant new content addition. Id doesn't plan to offer a whole new level for the game, for free or pay. They're probably too busy planning their next iOS games, of which Carmack hopes for at least two in 2011, a minimum of one based on the Rage universe and possibly one based on Quake, working off the art assets for the online PC web browser game Quake Live.